


king’s gambit

by pyrophane



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, General Temporal Instability, M/M, Obligatory Beach Interlude, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-09-30 15:04:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20449073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/pseuds/pyrophane
Summary: Donghyuck is not a traitor. Donghyuck does not let go of the things he loves.





	king’s gambit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thereisnoreality](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereisnoreality/gifts).
  * Inspired by [darling, we're a greek tragedy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19736878) by [thereisnoreality](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereisnoreality/pseuds/thereisnoreality). 

> dear vivi: i was very nervous writing this for you bc i admire your work a lot T__T i hope this does the original even a fraction of justice!! ♡♡♡
> 
> this probably won't make much sense without the original, so please read it if you haven't already!! see end notes for some spoilery content warnings

A façade, like an ideal, can be oppressive unless balanced by a balcony on which you can stand and call down to those in the street, Come over here and look up at us. Aren’t we exactly what you wanted to believe in?

\- _In the Street,_ Mary Jo Bang

The realisation is nearly instantaneous. Donghyuck knows emotions, has trained in the art, and all he can divine out of Renjun’s face is a shadow of a shadow chased away by the warm glow of something almost extraordinarily open. Looking right at him, ocean-eyed, transfixed, like he isn’t seeing the gun in Donghyuck’s hand at all. Like the way he’d looked after Donghyuck had kissed him for the first time in the quiet dark of the street under the window, everything softened by rain, that light in his eyes, that aliveness. 

Lock it away. There’s no place for it here. Donghyuck won’t waver, not this close to the end.

“I had a duty,” Renjun is saying. “I came here to escape it.”

“And you met your fate at the end of it,” Donghyuck says. Chokes it out. The heat behind his eyes is unbearable, spills over. 

Renjun shakes his head. “I met _you _at the end of it,” he says, all wonder, “and I love you so fucking much, do you know that? I was happy. You made me happy. I’ll always—” 

Donghyuck’s barely aware of the words slipping out of his mouth. After that first kiss Renjun had said _I’m happy_, cautious, disbelieving, as though he hadn’t thought himself capable of the feeling. Donghyuck had been thinking of the photographs of Renjun’s work that had been in his file, blurry images of bodies that barely resembled bodies anymore. The Devil’s Right Hand, they’d nicknamed him. How naive of him to think he could set so much as a foot on American soil without them knowing; Donghyuck remembered Mark’s incredulous eyebrows as the report came in. When he’d walked into Donghyuck’s diner alone and unarmed it felt like a portent. Sealed his fate with a strawberry milkshake.

And now Renjun’s asking him to choose between four impossible options. Donghyuck can’t let him go, much less leave with him. Donghyuck can’t watch him die. That leaves him one last choice. His hands are frozen around the gun. Something slams into the door. Then again.

“Time’s up, darling,” Renjun says. The smile on his face is almost gentle. His fingers around the pen at his throat are steady. “I’m glad it was you.” 

The gun is in his hand again. His fingers go nerveless and it nearly slips out of his grip. He doesn’t—hadn’t he just seen—he’s shaking so badly Renjun curls a hand around his, over the gun, and murmurs, “I don’t think I’d mind dying by your hands.” 

You already have. I watched you die. There’s no time to process it, no time to tell him anything, the sirens below the window, the heavy thud of boots clattering up the stairs. All he can do is fist his spare hand in the front of Renjun’s shirt and crush their mouths together like he’ll be able to carry it with him forever— 

He blinks and he’s setting the phone back down in the secret back room of the bookstore, mouth still aching from the imprint of Renjun’s teeth and tongue but it’s a phantom sensation, ebbing away with every passing second. It’s morning again, Valentine’s Day. Renjun is waiting for him outside to take him back to his apartment. It shouldn’t be possible. His heart hammers electric. Donghyuck squeezes his eyes shut, lowers his forehead onto the table, gives himself five seconds to panic, and then he stands back up. Hallucination or miracle or whatever else, he has a duty to fulfil. 

So he plays it out. Gun aimed at Renjun’s chest. The realisation unfolds. Donghyuck denies it until he can’t any more.

Donghyuck knows Renjun’s file cover to cover, the shredded bodies crisscrossing continents behind him like a contrail. All that blood on his hands and he still touches Donghyuck so gently, makes a cradle out of his palm for Donghyuck’s cheek, that awful smile tugging at his mouth, eyes shining, focused, bright. 

They’re spies. They lie. Honesty sits out of place like a second heart, dislodged and vulnerable outside of the ribcage. Maybe it’s because of that that Donghyuck recognises it so unmistakeably, in the way Renjun looks at him, in the way Renjun’s mouth shapes the word _darling_. In himself, racing underneath his skin with every pulse of blood. Love or duty, love or duty, the coin somersaulting through the air in a wide copper arc, flipped on its edge, catching the light. _You have to choose,_ Renjun is saying. _You have to choose._

The original deal was this: they did it Donghyuck’s way or not at all. The more Mark pushed for Donghyuck to turn Renjun in already, the more Donghyuck pushed right back. The assignment was observation, containment, neutralisation. Donghyuck was observing, containing. Soon he’d get to the neutralising. But not yet.

Nothing in the assignment had said, directly, _kiss the enemy agent._ Or _do everything you can to make the enemy agent smile like that again, because he looks so, so sad when he thinks nobody is watching._ Or even, _tell the enemy agent you love him, before you kill him._

Scratch that out. New game plan. Donghyuck’s good with improvisation, it’s what makes him such a good agent. Made him such a good agent. He’s probably compromised beyond saving, regardless of what he chooses, because the _one_ thing an agent shouldn’t do is hesitate and all Donghyuck has been capable of lately is inertia—not that it matters, if the day never turns over. But if there’s no way to change what happens in Renjun’s apartment then they’ll just have to stay out of it. Simple as that. 

He walks out of the bookstore, the dial tone ringing in his ears. He takes Renjun’s arm. Says, “Actually, I was thinking—I wanted to go to see the ocean with you too, today!”

He pretends to deliberate. Renjun’s entire expression softens, just as Donghyuck had known it would. “Well? What’s it going to be, Donghyuck Lee?” Renjun teases. “My apartment, or the beach?”

“Beach first,” Donghyuck says, clapping his hands together decisively. “Apartment later,” and Renjun just laughs and says, “Anything you like.”

They take the bus. Sitting next to Donghyuck in the window seat, Renjun eyes the sky outside. “There’s a storm coming,” he notes.

“Afraid of a little rain?” Donghyuck says.

“Of course not,” Renjun fires back. 

There aren’t many other people around at the beach today, most likely because they have better things to do than succumb to hypothermia, but really that’s Donghyuck’s best case scenario at the moment. The sun ducks in and out of the clouds, bright as a coin and just as elusive. They kick off their shoes and leave their coats on the sand. 

As soon as they’re close enough to the ocean Donghyuck shoves Renjun into the water. Since he knows to look for it he can see the moment all of Renjun’s muscles lock up, reflexive shift into fight mode, before the tension flows out of him by virtue of sheer effort. He splutters, then grabs at Donghyuck, who flails wildly trying to escape, before he hits the water too. 

It’s a shock, the sudden cold, liquid filling his mouth, and when he surfaces he’s coughing and gasping but the moment he locks eyes with Renjun they both double over in laughter. Helpless, the breath rushing out of him. Buffeted by the tides it’s so easy to imagine them as any two other people, untethered and careless. Water up to his waist, all of him soaked, clothes plastered to his body, and he reaches out to cup a hand over the nape of Renjun’s neck, drawing him closer. Renjun’s arms twine around his waist, the heat of his exhale fanning out over Donghyuck’s mouth. He’s smiling into the kiss. So is Donghyuck.

Later, at the close of the day, the sky bruising dark, Renjun’s fingers fit neatly against his as they walk along the shoreline. “Want to go back in the water?” Renjun says.

Donghyuck shakes his head reluctantly. “Too cold,” he says. “But I’ll cheer you on… and I can think of plenty of ways we can warm up afterwards. At your apartment. You haven’t forgotten, have you?” He finishes with a wink, ducking out of the way of Renjun’s elbow.

“Of course I haven’t,” Renjun says, mouth pulling up in a wry smile. He steps towards the water’s edge. Then again.

He twists back, shouts something at Donghyuck. The wind snatches the words from Renjun’s mouth but he’s grinning from ear to ear, ankle-deep in seafoam, prelude to a storm overhead. Sunset stains the sky violet and pink, light piercing through cathedrals of clouds like spears and it looks like a fucking revelation, end of the world hanging just beyond the horizon. Donghyuck’s cold all the way down to the tips of his fingers. His voice freezes at the base of his throat in ice shards.

It’s the longest this day has ever been. Renjun, barefoot and shading his eyes against the glare off the waves as he squints towards the horizon. Donghyuck tries to commit it all to memory, keeping his eyes wide open until it hurts, because every blink is one that might upend the world around him in that little unconscious instant of darkness. 

“Renjun,” he calls, and Renjun turns around, all the warmth lacking from the day plain on his face, and nobody has ever looked at Donghyuck like that, or ever will again.

The phone is in his hand. The smooth beige plastic warmed by the heat of his skin. Dial tone just audible, drifting out of the speaker. Somewhere in a hidden office in the heart of the city Mark is moving the final pieces of the operation into place, mobilising the police team that’s coming for the Devil’s Right Hand. Carefully, gently, like laying a child down to sleep, Donghyuck sets the phone back in place. The gun hidden in his coat carries a weight like lead. He walks out of the bookstore. He takes Renjun’s arm.

The gun’s nestled right under Renjun’s ribs. Finger on the trigger, how hard can it be? Donghyuck isn’t strictly speaking a field agent but he’s passed all the requisite evaluations, done his time in the firing ranges, stance open, kickback ricocheting up his arm, he knows the mechanics of the action. If he aims it right it’ll bypass the bone, rupture the heart. Quick and clean, or at least relatively so. He could give Renjun that much. Hold him as he bled out. Put his thumbs over Renjun’s eyes to feel the flutter and then the stillness. Poison is always a terrible way to go, much less by your own hands. 

This close he can see the dampness of Renjun’s lashes, the desperation fissuring his expression, the bloom of red over the swell of his bottom lip where Donghyuck set his teeth because he didn’t know how else to tell Renjun everything he still had left to say. The apartment is a glass enclosure, a perfect capsule. Like this the sirens won’t ever reach them.

“I’m sorry,” Donghyuck says, or maybe he says, _I love you,_ or _Every time I touched you I left another piece of my heart in you but you understand better than anyone else why it has to be like this, don’t you? Don’t you? _

Renjun doesn’t smile this time. Face solemn and alight with intent. “I’m glad it was you,” he whispers.

No more room for regrets, isn’t that just what Donghyuck had promised himself when he’d picked up the phone in the bookstore to call Mark, to turn Renjun in. No more hesitation. 

“Time’s up, darling,” Renjun says, and Donghyuck screams and screams and opens his eyes with the phone in his hand, lifts it over his head and smashes it against the table, again and again. No matter how far back he finds himself it’s never far enough, always the dial tone at the end of a phone call greeting him on the other side of a blink. What’s the point if all this lets him do is live out the aftermath a little differently? One more day with Renjun, one more _new_ day, he’d give anything. 

Flash forward. Renjun’s body crumpled at his feet, foam on his pale lips. Rewind. Gun in his hand. Rewind. Phone in his hand. Flash forward. Time’s up. What’s it going to be, Donghyuck Lee? What’s it going to be?

“You have to choose, darling,” Renjun says. The endearment comes out all wrong from his mouth, too much behind it, too much meaning. “Or I will.” 

Donghyuck’s seen it so many times over now, what Renjun’s choice looks like, glint of the poisoned blade in the sunlight. He can’t watch it again. He doesn’t want Renjun to hurt. How deceptively easy it’d been, however many mornings ago, to convince himself to pick up the phone, pick this path. Duty to country above all. He hadn’t realised how close his heart lay to the surface. The truth is that their choices have already long been made for them, machinery set into motion, and the window of everything left in their hands is only narrowing and narrowing. Renjun must have known this from the start, or maybe he’d forgotten, too. Happiness is obliterative like that.

Donghyuck is not a traitor. Donghyuck does not let go of the things he loves. _Well? What’s it going to be? _

Blood batters his eardrums like heavy rain. The world turns on a coin’s edge. 

“Fuck,” Donghyuck says, the gun clattering to the ground, “fuck, fuck it, I’m—let’s go, let’s _go_,” and Renjun’s eyes are like stars.

The phone is in his hand again.

**Author's Note:**

> content notes: permanent(?) character death, ambiguous/open ending
> 
> thank you for reading!! feel free to let me know what you thought ♡
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/juncheolsoo) / [cc](https://curiouscat.me/inheritance)


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